Manual P2V conversion using paragon image

Recently I did conversion of windows 2000 sp4 server to the VM on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 sp1. Here are steps:

Create a blank VM with fixed disk. The disk size should be enough to accommodate all partitions of the physical server.

Create an image of system partition (c: -drive) of the physical server using an image software - I did use Paragon Drive backup 8.51 Server edition. Copy the image to a network share (do not use a domain controller share)

On virtual server host insert paragon recovery CD and restore the C: partition to the new VM created in step 1.

Now we need to replace HAL on VM, insert OS CD in my case windows 2000 sp2 and run repair (non-destructive) on windows installation.

After repair the VM OS should start (start it without network connection) - remove it from domain and change IP address. You need to apply all windows service packs and updates, which was on the physical server.

Now (if applicable) you need to create additional partitions with same drive letters as on old physical server (in my case e: and g:), the size of the partitions is not important as long it will be bigger as used space on the old server.

After that copy folders from the old server partitions to the VM partitions and it should restore all previous shares.

Basically we done, but remember until it is finished start up of VM might be painfully slow - sometimes 20-25 min. And it is recommended before doing image disable all unneeded services and remove unneeded applications, antivirus and network teaming.

EMC iSCSI FW Upgrade with MS iSCSI initiator

1. Do not try it on a host with disabled iSCSI board
2. Upgrade all host based iSCSI componenets: MS iSCSI initiator, EMC PowerPath iSCSI, and Novisphere Express Utility (each upgrade will require reboot)
3. Disconnect iSCSI dedicated cables from the iSCSI dedicated switch (from Hosts site)
4. Use firefox to load Navispere Express (according EMC IE can be slower), enable pop-ups for iSCSI site.
5. Update the FW from downloaded zip file (do not extract). The upgrade can take long time in my case 20 min per SP.

Move SQL 2005 system databases

Good article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administration/2605/# By Vince Iacoboni, 2006/09/26 with script. Just one problem you need to disconnect your SQL server from the newtwork and stop all additional SQL services as Reporting, Analysis, Search and so on, and stop WWW service. All of this should be done in order the script will be able to put SQL server in single user mode and move mssqlsystemresource database.

Change How to change the Application Pool Identity for SharePoint Central Administration (SCA)

It is from http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2007/07/06/how-to-change-service-accounts-and-their-passwords-in-moss-and-wss-3-0.aspx blog:

"Repeat these steps on each server which hosts the SharePoint Central Administration web application. If the web front-end (WFE) and application (APP) server roles are served by separate machines, SCA should be enabled on one APP server (or more) and stopped and/or removed from the WFE servers. This allows control over access to the SCA. The SCA service account should not be the same as that used for the SharePoint application pool so even if one is compromised, the other remains secure.

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Run: stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin domain\username -password password
   Be patient. This may take a few minutes to run.
3. To restart the application pool, either open IIS and recycle the application pool, or open a command prompt and type iisreset -noforce
4. Open SharePoint Central Administration in a browser to confirm that the change was successful.

The above steps create an Administration Application Pool Credential Deployment timer job. You can see this in the Timer Job Definitions page. The job is complete when it no longer appears in the list of definitions (refresh the browser, this isn't automatic).

The blog contain information how to change over accounts.